For courts and registries

What Halves is

Halves is a shared ledger kept by two separated parents. Each records what they spent on their children and what they paid the other parent, and each can respond to what the other records. It is a record of entries made by the parents. It does not verify that an expense was incurred, hold or move money, or take a view on any dispute between them.

What a statement is, and what it is not

A statement is a document generated from that ledger for a given month, or, in the case of an arrears certificate, across the life of a maintenance order. It shows the entries as the parents logged them, who logged each one, and whether the other parent agreed with it.

Two things are worth reading carefully. An entry marked as acknowledged means the other parent agreed it was correct; an entry that is disputed is excluded from the balance and the stated reason appears with it. An entry that is neither has simply not been responded to yet, and no inference should be drawn from that alone. Nothing is ever deleted: an entry made in error is voided, stays visible, and is marked as voided.

Verifying a statement you have been given

Every statement carries a reference and a fingerprint in the footer of each page, in the form gethalves.com/verify/ABC123DEF4 followed by twelve characters. Open that address. It will tell you whether that reference was issued, what kind of document it is, which children and period it covers, when it was generated, and whether each parent had confirmed the period at that moment.

That page also shows the full SHA-256 hash of the document as generated, and offers a file check: choose the PDF you hold and the page will confirm whether it is that exact document. The file is read in your browser and is not uploaded, so a document under seal does not leave your machine. A file that has been edited, or re-saved by another program, will not match.

The verification page shows no figures, no receipts and no surnames. It answers whether a document is genuine, not what is in it.

Regenerating a statement produces a new reference. An older reference continues to verify the document it was issued for, so a statement filed with the court last year still checks out after the ledger has moved on.

The arrears certificate

Where the parents have recorded a maintenance order, an arrears certificate sets out, for each child, the terms of the order as they entered it, then a month-by-month table of what fell due, what was paid, and the running arrears, with payment references. It states the totals for the year to date and since the order began.

The order details are as the parents entered them. Halves has not seen the order itself and does not certify that the figures match it.

A court seat

A court or registry can be given read-only access to a household. It cannot be granted by one parent: one parent requests it, giving the registry's email address, the matter or case number, and how long the access should last; the other parent must approve it in the app before any invitation is sent. A refusal is recorded alongside an approval.

A court seat can read the ledger, the statements and the arrears certificate. It cannot enter, alter, acknowledge, dispute or void anything, and it receives no notifications. It is scoped to the one household it was granted for, and it stops working on its expiry date without anyone having to withdraw it.

Every page opened under a court seat is recorded with the time it was opened. That record is visible to the seat itself and to both parents, and cannot be edited or removed by any of them. Both parents also see, on the household page, that a seat is active, which registry holds it and until when.

Limits you should know about

• Halves records what the parents enter. It does not check receipts, verify that a payment left a bank account, or confirm that an order says what a parent has entered.
• A balance is computed from the split shares in force on the date of each expense. Those shares are entered by the parents, from their agreement or from an order.
• A verified statement establishes that a document was produced by Halves from a given ledger at a given time, and that the copy in your hands is unaltered. It does not establish that the underlying entries are true.
• Nothing in Halves is legal advice.